Friend of slain girl IDs photo as murder suspect

McCullough's half sisters say parents lied to FBI

A childhood friend of a slain Sycamore girl identified an old photo in court Tuesday as that of the man charged in the girl's 1957 abduction and death.

"It's this photo, right there," Kathy Chapman said, pointing to a 1950s-era picture of Jack McCullough from a group of six laid out in front of her by DeKalb County prosecutors.

"When was the last time you saw that face?" Assistant State's Attorney Julie Trevarthen asked Chapman, 63.

"Nineteen fifty-seven. Dec. 3," she said.

That was the date Maria Ridulph, 7, disappeared from her Sycamore neighborhood. Her body was found near Galena in April 1958, but no one was charged until 2011 when police arrested McCullough, a 72-year-old Seattle retiree and former Sycamore resident known as John Tessier.

The testimony came on the second day of McCullough's trial, a day in which two of McCullough's half sisters said their parents gave a false alibi about McCullough to federal agents and another sister described a deathbed revelation from their mother almost 40 years later in which she accused her son of involvement in the crime.

Chapman described how she and Maria were playing a game on a street corner that involved dodging the headlights of oncoming cars by hiding behind a big tree when man in a multicolored sweater walked up and introduced himself as Johnny.

After several minutes, Chapman said, she went home briefly to retrieve her mittens, but when she returned, Johnny and Maria were gone.

McCullough's half sister Katheran Caulfield took the stand after Chapman and said their mother had knitted McCullough a multicolored sweater that he wore often. But she said she never saw him wear it after Maria disappeared.

Caulfield and her sister, Jeanne Tessier, testified that FBI agents visited the Tessier home in the days after Maria vanished, but parents Eileen and Ralph Tessier lied to them, telling them their son, who was 17 when Maria disappeared, was home the night of the crime.

The sisters said McCullough had not been home the night of Dec. 3, and both said he was not there for breakfast the following morning.

Defense attorney Thomas McCulloch asked Caulfield why she didn't speak up to the police while they were interviewing her parents.

"I was 12 years old," she said. "No, I would never do that."

The sisters described how their father joined in the search for the missing girl that night, opening up the hardware store where he worked to supply flashlights and lanterns. Their mother joined other women at the armory to make sandwiches and coffee for the searchers, the daughters said.

A third sister, Janet Tessier, said the mother made an admission in January 1994 as she lay dying of cancer in a DeKalb hospital. Janet said she was with her mother when Eileen Tessier grasped her wrist.

"Those two little girls and the one that disappeared — John did it, John did it. And you have to tell someone," Eileen Tessier said, according to her daughter.

Tessier said she reached out to Sycamore police and the FBI in subsequent years, without results. In 2008, she said, she sent an email to Illinois State Police, who began making fresh inquiries. They eventually compiled a photographic lineup for Chapman, who was the 8-year-old playmate with Maria the snowy night she was reported missing.